semi-open | spirit surveys.

[exequy]

WHO: Kostos & Mostly Mages
WHAT: Surveying spirits at Circles and battlefields
WHEN: Throughout the winter
WHERE: Various
NOTES: This is for rebel mage tasks. Involved mages are so so invited to toss up top-levels for their Circle/battlefield of choice, which can be exploration or spirit stuff or something else entirely. You're also free to bring an uninvolved/non-mage buddy along, with excuses made for the visit and the spirit aspect kept secret as needed, if you want to do your own CR stuff about visiting old haunts. And if you want to be involved but don't see a clear way in or need more preliminary planning first, hit me up and I will see what I can do.

The network of eluvians makes this prospect—visiting abandoned Circles, surveying battlefields from the Mage/Templar War—less daunting than it might have been before, but many of them still need to wait for some other work to carry the right people within a day's ride. Others need to wait for snowstorms to pass and roads to be cleared. The timing winds up erratic.

But the work itself follows a routine. Address mundane problems first, going around them rather than through them whenever possible. The Circles in the cities might have posted guards who need to be bribed or convinced or snuck around. Those in the wilds might be under occupation by vagrants or highwaymen who require the same. And any of them might have roving shades or veil tears to avoid while Kostos follows a more familiar former occupant through the halls, terse questions about where the fighting was worse, where the Harrowings occurred, or where the troublemakers were tossed emerging from the hood of his heavy coat.

Battlefields are easier. Most of them open spaces, many of them still sporting scars.

Sometimes nothing needs to be summoned; it's already there, running down a corridor in terror, and only needs to be persuaded to stop. Other times Kostos lays out summoning stones.

Comments

[aberratic]

If she hadn't turned to pace toward him at just the right (wrong?) moment, she might not have seen Julius' expression change. For a moment, Ness isn't sure what she's done wrong—the look was too brief, her focus too far elsewhere to effectively connect cause and effect.

It doesn't take long to figure out, of course. Between Julius not wanting to replicate them and what she already knows about Circles...

"Of course not," she says softly, a weird mix of chagrined and angry. Can't one thing in this fucking plane not be horrible? Just one? And why did she have to say that so cavalierly, that was clearly a thought best kept to herself.

Her stomach rolls, and Ness forces herself to take a deep breath. Self-recrimination won't fix anything. She can't un-say the stupid thing she said. Dwelling won't help, and the point is to help.

She starts again, slower this time.

"There will have to be alternatives. No Templars, no Annulment, no Tranquility. There must be other ways of limiting magic's destructive ability—if nothing else, Circle structures must have been protected against errant fireballs? Barrier magic might be a place to start... Lyrium? Could it be worked into the walls, maybe? That could be dangerous if not done correctly... but is there a correct way to do something like that? Dwarves would know, probably."

It's only when she's paced away from him again that Ness realizes: she's gotten carried away again, and she visibly drags her focus back into the room, onto Julius, with a wince.

"I apologize, Seneschal. I'm—very passionate about this idea, obviously, but I know I'm getting ahead of myself. I don't mean to... I know it's complicated."

[overharrowed]

"You have nothing to apologize for," was both kind and sincere. "I agree with you that it's an idea worth pursuing. And I think the perspective of someone seeing the situation with fresh eyes will be valuable in it, for what it's worth. Mages who grew up here, we all carry ... particular experiences that shaped us. It leaves a particular shape."

He glances around the room they're in. The remains of that life. It's striking that Ness sometimes struggles to picture it, and when he was her age, he hadn't been able to picture any meaningful alternative. On which note, he resumes, quieter:

"For what it's worth, it took me a long time to even get to the position of abandoning the Circle system, personally. And part of what held me back was that I'd seen the aftermath of magic gone wrong personally. The rebellion here involved blood magic and abominations," plural, "and it came very close to wiping us out before they could even bother to annul the Circle. I've changed my thinking on the future for Thedosian mages, but not because I've forgotten the ways that magic can go lethally wrong. I think we will need to work through safeguards for accidents, yes, but ... if you are talking to rich natives who aren't mages themselves, they're going to ask what about abominations early." They might even mention Uldred by name, if they're in Ferelden. "It's something we should think about in this project."

He doesn't speak as if it's something she should have known before, but as if it's something she'll need to factor in. If (when) they move forward.

[aberratic]

She's already considering, mind spooling out from her again, taward Nevarra, Rivain, researching which Circles had the least number of abominations, what their practices were like, how they trained their mages—but Ness wrestles her attention back, grounds herself to the conversation here and now.

We, he said.

"I understand, Seneschal, and you're right, of course. It would be irresponsible, self-defeating, not to consider that perspective. Thank you, for your indulgence, and your advice."

There are those that might rail against having to prove they can be trusted to educate themselves; Ness isn't one of them. However she feels about it (bad, for the record), yelling about it won't change anything. They have to work with the world as it is, not as it should be—not as it is in Faerûn, hard as it can be to avoid the comparisons. This would never happen in the Sword Coast... But they're not in the Sword Coast. How things are there is immaterial.

"It can be... difficult," she says, soft, after a short pause, "to imagine a future after this war. So much is uncertain in so many ways, for all of us. I don't even know if I'll be here tomorrow," a prospect which she visibly has to Not Think About, "but I hope... I hope we have the chance to decide if this is really what we want to do with ourselves after. I like the idea of it."